The Riven Shield

by Michelle West

“More than I’d like,” she said, without thinking. And then, when the Winter King’s snort invaded the silence, she added, “I’ve seen them fight before.”

  “And one is a danger?”

  “A big danger, no matter what its power.”

  He turned and lifted a hand, by gesture calling for a halt to the march.

  She took advantage of it; she waved Kallandras forward. He came at once, in perfect silence. “ATerafin?”

  “Has Lord Celleriant discovered anything?”

  “Not to report, no. But he is . . . uneasy.”

  He looked anything but.

  “Is this the same kind of uneasy he was in the desert?”

  Kallandras stared at her for a moment, and then he smiled; it was a slight smile, but it seemed almost genuine. “Yes.”

  “And there were five. No, six.”

  He nodded.

  The Tor’agar nodded as well. “Thank you, ATerafin.” He turned to the Toran and spoke quickly and quietly; his words did not reach her ears.

  But they didn’t have to; their meaning was made plain when the Toran wheeled and rode back into the column. When they appeared again, they bore two bows.

  They gave these to their Tor, and he in turn gave them into Kallandras’ keeping.

  “I need not tell you,” he said, although plainly he did, “that these are of value to me; we have few fletchers in the South, and they are not of note.”

  “The bows are of Imperial manufacture?”

  “Indeed.”

  “We will return them to you before we depart these lands,” Kallandras said. He bowed. Something about the bow was subtly wrong, but it wasn’t until he rose that Jewel realized what it was: It was entirely Southern. It suited him.

  The Tor’agar was silent. At length, he said, “I do not like this. I had hoped that you might strengthen my men by presence alone.

  “I release you,” he said coldly. “From my command and my service. Go as you will; do what you must.”

  Kallandras nodded. “The ATerafin?”

  “She, too, must follow her own course.” He was silent a moment, weighing words. At length, he shifted into Torra. “We will buy time, if that is possible. My cousin will not . . . attack . . . before we have finished negotiations in Damar. But I do not know the servants of the Lord of Night; I do not know the intent of Marente. I cannot say what they will do.

  “I am the Lord’s man; I can guess. Whether they stay their hand or not will depend in large part upon what we are seen to do—and if we are seen in the company of . . . the ATerafin’s mount, and her liege—”

  “Understood,” Kallandras said. “Avandar?”

  Jewel turned to look at her domicis. It was funny; he had shed the menace and strangeness of the desert and the mountain, and she had chosen to allow it; she accepted his presence as if he was still a complicated, condescending domicis.

  The stag moved beneath her stiff legs; the night was cool.

  Avandar’s profile faced her; no more. But his expression was distant, his eyes dark; he seemed taller in the shadows of night.

  He swiveled his gaze; caught hers and held it. “What would you have of me, ATerafin?”

  A hundred answers came to her lips, and a hundred answers died before leaving them. She could not see the whites of his eyes. She could see something akin to gold instead, and it burned. Her hands gripped folds of skin and fur as she met those eyes and held them.

  “Avandar Gallais,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  Not enough, Jewel, the Winter King said, and his voice was the soul of ice.

  “I want you to be Avandar Gallais.”

  “Is that not what I am?”

  She lifted a hand then. Lifted an arm. It burned in the cold of night, and she knew which arm she had lifted; what lay upon the surface of skin, beneath the folds of rough cloth.

  “It’s not all that you are,” she replied. “I—I know this.” She bit her lip and let go of fur for long enough to shove the hair out of her eyes. “But this is all that I am, and I . . .”

  He waited. In silence, the time passed, and it was time they did not have. She knew it.

  But she was afraid. It was night. Night now. Maybe in the day—

  Pretend, she thought. Pretend, for just a little while longer, that that is all you are.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words, because even thinking them, she despised them.

  “How many people are in the village?” she asked instead, and felt the Winter King’s bitter disappointment. Surprising, how much it could sting.

  Avandar seemed to grow taller. The arm he had lifted—and he had lifted his arm, although when, she couldn’t remember, fell back to his side. He offered his profile for her inspection, but it might as well have been a wall.

  The Tor’agar frowned. He was not a stupid man; he was aware that something had passed between these Northerners and the stag that was both significant and beyond his grasp. It did nothing to improve his temper.

  “Ten thousand,” he said curtly.

  Ten thousand. She thought of telling him that “village” was not the word she thought it was, at least not in the North. “How many—”

  She lifted her hand. “No, forget it. I’m sorry.” She ran the back of her hand across her eyes. “Tor’agar.”

  “ATerafin.”

  “We’ll find the kin.”

  “Kin?”

  “The—the Servants of the Lord of Night. We’ll find them. We’ll kill them. Or send them back to the Hells.”

  He waited, sensing that she had not yet finished. He was right.

  “But we don’t do this for free.”

  The stillness that enveloped his face robbed the clearing of the last of its warmth. “What would you have of me, stranger?”

  His Toran urged their horses forward; their Tor sent them back with a gesture, his hand a mailed fist.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” she answered.

  “We do not have the time for games, ATerafin.”

  “I know.”

  What do you want, idiot? She cursed herself in the silence. Tell him to free all the serafs in his precious village if we manage to save it?

  He’d never agree. She knew it.

  But she found words, ashamed that she could. “The Serra,” she said. Her voice was remarkably calm.

  “What of the Serra?”

  “The Serra Diora.”

  “What of her?”

  “She has to go North. North and East.”

  Silence, then.

  “And I want your word that you will do everything in your power to see that she gets there. Everything.”

  “I will offer you my word; the word of Clemente. But in return for your service this eve, I will also place one condition upon this oath.”

  “And that?”

  “I want to know why.”

  “Why?” It seemed obvious to her. “Because if she doesn’t, we’ll lose this war. And I think you’re beginning to understand why we can’t afford to.”

  Too late, she realized that she should have had anyone else offer these words, this warning; she was, after all, a woman, and these lands were within a Dominion that granted women little.

  “ATerafin,” Avandar said. It was almost a blessing. She turned to meet his gaze, wary now. “In the South, men do not swear binding oaths to women.”

  His expression was familiar; he was annoyed. Damn him anyway. He was right.

  But the Tor’agar raised his hand again. “I swear an oath not to you,” he said quietly, “but to the Lord, the Lady, and the forest which borders these lands. I will not surrender my dominion to the Lord of Night; I will not allow any battle against him to falter. I confess that I would not
normally accept the word of a Northerner in these matters. Or perhaps in any other. But you ride a great stag, and you command a servant of the Lady.

  “Among the common cerdan, you are her signal, and her blessing.”

  “You are not—”

  “No. I am not. But I am one sword. The swords that will be lifted this eve will be lifted by men who are not so cautious.”

  “Have you horn?” she asked him quietly.

  “I have.”

  “Wind it,” she said, “if we are needed.”

  “I think,” he said, “If it is winded, you will not have the opportunity to reach us.”

  “We will.”

  He bowed. “We understand the war we have prepared to fight. I pray you understand as well that war that you have undertaken.”

  She closed her eyes. “Kallandras,” she said.

  “ATerafin.”

  “We enter the forest.”

  Only when they were well away from the body of the Tor’agar’s army did someone speak.

  To Jewel’s surprise, it was Lord Celleriant. “Lady,” he said, bowing, “this is not the safest path.”

  “It’s the only path,” she said quietly.

  “There are others. The village—and it is poorly named, if my understanding of the human word ‘village’ has any meaning—is large; there are many ways to reach it, and none of them are as dangerous—”

  “They are all dangerous,” she snapped back. “And they’re all guarded.”

  Arianni gray met common brown. Gray fell first.

  She had been taken by the words; they had left her lips without any conscious thought on her part. But once they had, she knew them for truth.

  “Very few are the guards that could deny us passage,” Celleriant said softly.

  “We want to choose the fight,” she snapped back. “On our own terms. We don’t know who—” She held up a hand, demanding silence.

  Since none of the men who regarded her now were ever talkative, it wasn’t that hard to get it. Think, damn it, think fast.

  Avandar stepped into her path. “Who guards the paths, Jewel?”

  “Ahead of you,” she whispered. Aie, she hated her gift. Hated it. “How many roads, Celleriant?”

  “Seven,” he said quietly.

  “You haven’t missed any?”

  He shook his head. “They’re cut through the fields and the edge of the Deepings, and this close to the dark forest, life has its own voice. It is not,” he added, “a gentle one; but it is not . . . yet . . . awake. I hear the silence where life has been cleared as if it were a scar; the paths are seven.”

  “Does that include the bridges?”

  “No, Lady. The bridges are within Damar.”

  “And this road?”

  “It leads to the East. The only way to reach the West is through the forest, or across the river itself, within Damar.”

  “There’s a bridge in the forest?”

  His smile was cold. Far too cold.

  “There is a passage,” he said quietly. “I would advise against it, were you any other mortal.”

  “What the Hells does that mean?”

  “It means,” he replied, drawing his sword from the air in front of his slender breast, “that you should not dismount until we are clear of the trees.”

  “And Kallandras?”

  “Kallandras, as you call him, has walked a darker road than this in his time, if I am not mistaken.”

  She didn’t like the way he said the bard’s name. It was almost possessive.

  Seven paths. “The forest—that’s not a path?”

  He laughed. The sound was beautiful. Funny, that beauty had come to be synonymous with things that were distant and cold. “It is not one of the seven,” he replied. “I ask again, Lady, that you choose a mortal road.”

  “Seven paths,” she said, lost in the number, the two words. “No”

  “No?”

  “They’re guarded. There are at least seven of the kin on the edge of town.” She said the words as if she were groping her way toward truth. She was. “They’re probably there to make sure that no one else escapes.”

  He nodded. “We can—”

  “Yes. We can. But not without announcing our presence.”

  “It is not our way to skulk.”

  “It is our way to skulk,” she snapped back. “Are there so many of the kin?”

  “They are many, in the Hells.”

  “Here, damnit. Here. Are there so many that they can just be sent out in numbers to capture one lousy village?”

  “That is the first intelligent question you’ve asked this eve.”

  “Thank you, Avandar.”

  Kallandras raised his head; until he did, she had not noticed that he had bowed it. “No,” he said. “I think that this village is of import.”

  “Or something in it?”

  “Or something within the Torrean.”

  She was silent as she absorbed the words. “They can’t . . . know . . . that we’re here.”

  “Not us, no.”

  “Then what?”

  “It is said—in the South—that the Sun Sword was crafted to be demon-bane.”

  “You think they—”

  He shrugged. “Understand, ATerafin, that although they were rare, the immortal races were not without their seers.”

  “But—”

  “I have had some experience,” he said, and the complete neutrality of his tone was chilling.

  “Lord Celleriant?”

  The Arianni lord was gazing at Kallandras. After a moment, he bowed; his hair draped across his left shoulder. Across his right, he now carried a Northern bow. “I will lead,” he said gravely.

  She nodded. But she looked to Avandar.

  He said nothing. His eyes still glittered with golden fire. A little, she thought, like the sun—the afterimage of the flames was burned into her vision for minutes, obscuring all else.

  “Well, Adelos?” Alessandro kai di’Clemente said, when the strangers had disappeared into the forest’s depths.

  “Tor’agar,” Ser Adelos said, inclining his head. He could not bow without dismounting.

  “Reymos?”

  “Tor’agar.”

  “Come. Your silence is unpleasant. We are not among outsiders now. Tell me.”

  The two men shared an uneasy glance. Alessandro waited for Reymos to speak. He assumed it would be Reymos, for Adelos often left the difficult words to the more quiet Toran.

  Reymos ran a hand through his beard and cleared his throat. “I trust them.”

  “Good. Adelos?”

  “I concur.”

  “But?”

  “The man—the seraf—that serves the Northern woman.”

  “Yes?”

  He shook his head. “I would not anger him. Not if you offered me the whole of the Terrean as reward.”

  Alessandro nodded again. “Come. We have two hours to travel before we arrive in Damar, and Ser Amando is not known for his patience.”

  Adelos spit to one side.

  The Tor’agar smiled bitterly, but said nothing; although his Toran were, measure for measure, men of the Court, they had not been born to the Court, and some of the habits of old returned to them in times of duress. Fear, they had mastered. Distaste. Exhaustion. But anger?

  Perhaps, in the end, he was his father’s son. The time spent in Manelo, the time spent in the Lambertan stronghold, had given him the appearance, the carriage, of high nobility. Certainly his title and his birth spoke of both. But he found no disdain for the men upon whom his life depended.

  “Adelos, tell Carvan that he is to keep all but a handful of his men sequestered in the Eastern half of Dam
ar. Have fifty men prepare to secure the bridges when we arrive.”

  Adelos nodded.

  But Alessandro noticed that the Captain of his Toran had let one hand drop to the sash at his waist; it hovered, in darkness, around the slender curve of silver horn.

  In the night, the woods seemed dark and devoid of life. Although no snow was upon the undergrowth, no ice upon the branches, Jewel felt Winter in the air; she shivered upon the back of the Winter King.

  Lord Celleriant knew no such cold. Although he stopped frequently as he traversed the thick of trees grown tall and majestic in the fringes of the forest, he did not notice the weight of their impenetrable shadows; he was at home in this place. Still, he did not lead them into the forest’s heart; where he strayed, he kept the flats and the plains of Mancorvo to one side or the other, as if they were anchor.

  She could not have done as much; the trees seemed to absorb the whole of her attention, and any glimpse she had of the cleared lands began to seem strange, drab, almost repulsive. She could not have walked in safety here.

  The Green Deepings were his home, the Winter King offered, in silence. Warmth nestled in the words. And in some fashion, this forest remembers them. He need know no fear here.

  No fear that is not for you, Lady.

  Don’t call me that, she said, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  Celleriant raised a hand. The Winter King came to a stop. Jewel noticed that the stag’s hooves were placed, with care, upon the ground; that although he moved quickly, he moved with a precision that spoke of dance. Dangerous dance.

  She heard voices in the fringes of this forest.

  Whispers, things that carried words just beyond the edge of her hearing.

  Do not listen, the Winter King said sharply.

  I’m not an idiot, she said, as sharply, although her hands gripped his fur. And anyway, I can’t hear a damn word they’re saying.

  No; that wasn’t true. She could hear a voice. One voice, resolving itself now into something that tugged at memory.

  The darkest of memories. Her rage.

  She couldn’t help herself; she turned back.

  Saw the dark trunks of trees, like an iron wall, extending into the distance for as far as the eye could see. Which was, all things considered, far indeed.

  Jewel, the Winter King said quietly.